‘Project Mausam’ – India’s answer to China’s ‘Maritime Silk Road’

India will soon launch “Project Mausam”, a PM Narendra Modi government’s utmost noteworthy foreign policy project for answering China’s rising impact in the Indian Ocean region. After the astonishing triumph of China’s “Maritime Silk Road” scheme, India plans to soon takeoff its own Project Mausam, a transnational program aimed to restore its ancient maritime routes and cultural links with republics in the region.

Titled “Project Mausam”: Maritime Routes and Cultural Landscapes crossways the Indian Ocean, the project emphasizes on the natural wind phenomenon, particularly monsoon winds used by Indian sailors in ancient times for maritime trade, that has formed relations amongst nations and groups linked by the Indian Ocean. Project Mausam purposes to determine the versatile Indian Ocean “world” — expanding from East Africa, the Arabian Peninsula, the Indian subcontinent and Sri Lanka to the Southeast Asian archipelago.

Though India is also amongst the nations asked to join China’s maritime silk route plan, India has been worried by the curiosity displayed by Sri Lanka and Maldives in the Chinese offer, which supposedly looks to restore ancient economic links.

India government will try to pull on its ancient connections with nations in this region as it proposes an alternative, which could counter-balance the maritime silk route of China. India also faces the difficult job of matching China’s stress on building landmark infrastructure in the region, including ports in Sri Lanka and Pakistan. Whereas the facilities are held to be civilian, India doubts China obtaining operational control of these.

Dating to AD 500-1000, a sailors’ trading map to constructed on wind patterns, displaying India as the pivot